


Rosemary for Remembrance

by TittyAlways



Series: Wicked Witch [2]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Blackholt AU, M/M, Urban Fantasy, tyki ran out of life goals like 2000 years ago and he's just been trolling since
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 08:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11204412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TittyAlways/pseuds/TittyAlways
Summary: Amidst owning a supply store in a city run by a mob and trying (and not quite succeeding) to keep up with all the other responsibilities which came with being in possession of hundreds of thousands of ancient magical artifacts which he had accumulated over his long life - yes hedidstill have that book he'd stolen from the Bookman Anuls, no he hadnointentions of giving it back anytime soon - Tyki could probably manage to teach Allen a spell, figure out what the fuck is going on with his magic, and maybe get a kiss thrown into the bargain.





	Rosemary for Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> sry i deleted this the first time cause it was midnight and shit and i didn't have the head to edit it lmfao. here we go, part two round two, lets see if im satisfied this time lol
> 
> also wow it got way way longer than i every expected it to and there's gonna have to be a third part if i wanna tie all this plot together lol

The order for ox blood arrived right when Tyki had requested it to, and the man who delivered the keg had such a distinct aura of _pig_ that Tyki almost wanted to laugh. Not at _him_ of course (a little at him), but more at the way this seething underbelly of the magical community insisted on highlighting how much authority they had over him. Tyki glanced at his watch. To the _second_ , actually. The truck pulled up outside the storefront the moment it turned to six in the morning, and this was meant to be a display of _authority?_ Yeah, so Tyki wanted to laugh.

He stayed leaning against the storefront, watching the wereboar roll the keg of blood for whatever amusement it was worth without bothering to lift a finger to help. He was much more amenable to lighting a cigarette and watching the Brutes _assert their authority,_ after all. The gang's errand boy struggled with the door for a moment too long and Tyki felt the smallest grin twitch his lips, reached up to slot his cigarette between them and glanced away so he could puff out a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

When he assumed the man had finally figured out how to maneuver a sixty-litre keg through a swinging door, Tyki instructed without bothering to glance over, his voice light with amusement, “On the counter, if you would be so kind.” 

He grunted something that _might_ have been assent and Tyki heard the bell above the door chime when it swung closed behind him. An amused smile sitting on his lips, Tyki enjoyed the refreshing drag of the cigarette burning in his lungs while he waited. When he returned Tyki offered him a pleasant smile while he blew away the cloying cigarette smoke.  “Thanks, lovely,” he murmured, his grin turning more than a little teasing. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Ignoring Tyki’s baiting as though he’d been warned (he almost certainly had), the delivery man asked, mechanical and unwilling like he was being forced to read off a script, “Is there anything else I can help you with today? Sir?”

Tyki arched a brow, wondered briefly if it was meant to be a joke. “The sage?” he prompted, closing his eyes while he drew from the cigarette.

“We weren’t able to get any on such short notice,” the man answered quickly. Too quickly. _Aah_ . Authority. You can have what you want whenever you want, but only the things we _want_ you to have. Bullshit. What the fuck was he going to do with  _sage?_ If he was going to limit one of two resources to a dangerous fucker who refused to let his shop be seized, Tyki personally would have cut off the ox blood. They weren't even making a  _point,_ they were just being fucking annoying. 

Tyki gave him a heavy-lidded stare, reached up to pluck the cigarette from his mouth and let the smoke spool out from between his slightly parted lips. The man said nothing, only watched Tyki with a tight jaw. Nervous. At length, Tyki asked lightly, pleasantly, and the slightest touch threateningly, “In the whole city?” Giving him a smile one part indulgent for every three parts razorblades, Tyki lifted his foot from the cracked pavement and reached down to stub the cigarette out on the sole of his shoe. “You seem to be labouring under the impression,” he murmured, flicking the butt into the litter-clogged gutter, “that I am a patient man.” He cast a scathing glance down at his wristwatch. Twelve past six. It had taken him _twelve minutes_ to get the keg in the store and tell Tyki he didn’t have the sage. “If it’s not here in eighteen minutes,” he said, giving him that sharp smile, “there will be issues.” When the wereboar didn’t leave immediately, Tyki closed his eyes against his presence like he could _will_ him away to being productive. “I suggest you make like piggies do when they see a wolf.” And he was _so much more_ than a wolf. If only they knew the half of it. What’s a mob to a king, indeed. He shrugged away from the wall and brushed past the wereboar, making for the door. “Twenty grams of sage, fresh,” he bit as he passed.

“You didn’t- Sir, you haven’t paid for…”

Tyki silenced him with a look, condescendingly reprimanding, and didn’t bother saying another word before pushing through the door into his shop. He got two steps inside before pausing and sighing at the keg sitting on the floor in front of the counter. Striding up and muttering, “After I _specifically asked,”_ Tyki swiped his arm through some of the clutter and mess that covered every inch of the countertop and cleared just enough space for the keg to sit. He heard something clatter to the floor behind the counter and ignored the fact that this might be the reason the boar had left Tyki to do it himself. With one hand he grasped the handle, imbued a bloodwork spell with a short, frustrated gesture and lifted the whole thing with ease, setting it carelessly up on the sturdy counter.

This whole thing was a joke, honestly - what, he had to write his own cooling runes on this bitch? Sure it’d been transported in a refrigerated truck, but a refrigerated truck wouldn't have been _necessary_ if they'd done it their own damn selves. It was shit work, running a supply store in a city whose supernatural community was run by a chaotic do-or-die mob. Tyki was half certain he was the only supplier left who hadn't been gang pressed into joining their liberation fanclub. Thought maybe he should start being concerned about that in the near future, but genuinely couldn’t find it in himself to care. He could leave it for a few more years, surely. Maybe a decade. These things took time, and Tyki was all about avoiding unnecessarily complicated messes where he could.

He stretched out over the counter, rummaged on the shelf right below and thanked his luck (though he counted it as design) that there was a permanent marker right where he needed it to be. With a touch more care, the moment of burning frustration with the delivery man receding, Tyki push some of the clutter aside so he had enough space to sit up on the counter. Carefully, he wrote the necessary runes around the top, middle and bottom of the keg. Condensation began forming on the metal and Tyki pursed his lips before tugging a black-stained cloth out from the mess surrounding him. He used the charmed piece of fabric to erase a few of the permanent runes and made a satisfied sound when the keg warmed just the tiniest bit.

Temperature was one of the easiest magics out there, and the runes could sustain themselves on a drop of ox blood for a week, so Tyki didn’t even bother cutting his palm for that. Hell a drop of _his_ blood would probably put frost on every surface, and that'd be the end of the dragon liver he was meant to be prepar-

Shit _, fuck_ , the _dragon liver_ he was an idiot oh god. Heedless of whatever he kicked off the counter, Tyki swung over to the other side and dashed to the back room, wrenched open the door and paused only long enough to shove his hand in a welding mitt before he grabbed the slippery length of viscera which had been quietly burning its way through his worktable. Without ceremony, he dropped it onto the heatproof tray he’d prepared moments before the delivery man had arrived with the blood. “Christ,” he bit out, looking at the twisted well of blackened, bloody wood in the middle of his bench. And then, because he didn’t have time to revert it - or make a new one, how many charms had he had to work into this to make it _functional? -_ he gritted, “Jesus fucking christ,” and wrenched the mitt off.

Shooting the liver a condemning glare, Tyki moved to the quietly simmering distillery at the other end of the room and crouched to squint at the transparent burgundy potion bubbling lightly under a low flame in the round bottom flask. It _looked_ right, and when he scrunched his nose and sniffed at the lip of the flask it smelled absolutely rancid, so that was a good sign. Pulling away and snorting to get the cloying smell of yarrow from his nose, Tyki turned off the flame and found a liquid chalk marker nearby to scrawl a small warming rune on the flask. He added a few more to encourage the tiny spell to draw from the ox blood one room over, and another to erase those runes once seven o’clock hit. And then he moved onto the next job on his nonexistent and incredibly illogical list.

No rest for the wicked and Tyki had a lot to do, distracted and methodlessly working through tasks as he remembered them. He had to set up a new infusion of crow feathers, find a supplier of phoenix ashes _(somewhere, somehow, fuck his entire job),_ had that bulk potion order which had been brewing all night and needed to be finished by seven, _and_ he needed to set up a spell - which he would do after the marinade for the feathers was completed and the potion was collected, no matter how much the ox blood tempted him. And the _fucking sage,_ he needed that to finish Allen’s order - god, his _order,_ when was he even coming to pick it up? Because Tyki needed to finish that spell before he arrived too and - fuck, how much blood had he even _wanted?_ How much sage? Tyki hadn’t written it down, he didn't think. If Allen had said. He honestly didn't even know if he had said. If, uh. If Tyki had written it in a place future-him would know where to look.

But the recommendations for the feathers was on the feather box, and Tyki assumed he would have written the amount on the same page he’d used as a reminder to actually order the blood. And - fuck it, fuck everything, he was elbow deep in dragon liver when the bell over the door chimed, signalling he was officially out of time with this dumb ass stupid ass health potion - for _whooping cough,_ of all things, like modern medicine _hadn’t cured that already._ But - fuck, okay, at least it was just simmering and all he needed to do was add sugar syrup for the taste and decant it. The dragon liver would keep for a few minutes, surely, but - fucking _fuck,_ but if it was already seven then that meant his fucking sage hadn’t come in and that meant Tyki would need to do some _stuff_ when it finally did. And Tyki didn’t much have the _time_ for stuff, considering his dragon liver was-

God, fuck it, whatever, just. Healing potion, getting back to the liver, slap on the wrist for the delivery man (nightmares-to-be of wolves and pigs in stick houses, and a petty hex to encourage the likelihood of him getting rear-ended on his way back to whoever he reported to) when he returned with _half of what Tyki had ordered_ , not to mention he was - oh jesus oh fuck he had no idea when Allen was intending to arrive.

Did he even _have_ time for a quick bloodwork spell? He probably didn’t have time. Certainly didn’t have time to cook up the marinade for the feathers, so that would have to be taken care of later. Nor enough time for a Revelation as he’d intended, but - okay fuck the spell, Tyki would use farsight as a warmup. He still needed the ox blood, had to think for a solid minute before remembering the correct rune to use, as well as something of Allen’s. Like a hair he’d dropped on the counter, or the fur-lined coat he’d never realised he’d left in the store a month ago. Tyki would give it back, of course, but. After he’d had a look at the charms woven into it. (He hadn’t really had time just yet, and he was staunchly ignoring the part of him that had simply gotten used to seeing the coat hanging on the back of his workroom door.)

It just came down to what Tyki was more willing to sacrifice. Which, his hair, obviously. Like… it wasn't even a realistic choice. Tyki desperately wanted to examine that coat, but his workload just _never fucking lightened_. There was blood magic woven into it, and it always felt cool to the touch whenever Tyki absently brushed his fingers across the hem as he passed where it hung in his workroom. It worked something like the alchemy of ages past - it was almost as though Allen had figured out a way to turn a regular item into a magical one without creating it from nothing but raw materials and magic. Which was not only a loophole Tyki _knew_ witches hadn’t started using en masse yet, but was actually quite delicate and fiddly to get right. Not to mention, when mixing the yellow mana of blood magic and the red mana of alchemy, one created a perfect conduit for black mana, which- god, Tyki didn’t have time for this.

 _Regardless_ of how interesting it was, Tyki shoved the distraction aside and got a vial under the keg’s tap. He filled it to the brim and covered the mouth with his thumb while he swung himself back over the countertop, rummaged through the sample drawer he habitually filled with bits and pieces of all his customers and found the box containing several strands of Allen’s hair, as well as the bloodstained bird skull the little witch had carved with delicate runes of fortune and luck and almost begrudgingly gifted Tyki for the lunar new year. The magic had all run out moons ago, but Tyki remembered that first month had found him with a fresh supply of phoenix feathers (which he hadn’t had in stock for _years),_ a djinn’s wish sealed in a bottle, and a vial of Mirror blood - both of which was more white mana than he’d seen since… well, since that whole hubbub millennia ago when the world was a different place and chaotic magic ran rife and the city he now stood in had been exiled from the world.

The skull had been a subtle yet spectacular piece of magic, and Tyki was beginning to wonder just how much truth was in Allen’s statement of being unaligned to blessings and charms. But Tyki figured that the reason all he’d seen of Allen’s magic was the skull and coat was due to the fact that creating those spells was so painstakingly difficult for him that he didn’t really manage much to a satisfactory standard - though from what Tyki had seen Allen’s definition of ‘satisfactory’ was incredibly more refined. Not to say Tyki slacked at all, but. _Damn_ that boy put in some effort.

Mirror blood, Mirror blood… he still had that somewhere, didn’t he? Well he couldn’t imagine _selling_ it, that shit was rare. If he were so inclined, Tyki could probably list the number of those blank slate creatures he’d met in his life on two hands - those he’d heard of surviving past childhood, surely fewer than a hundred. And he’d been around long enough to hear of plenty. So, thank you Allen for inadvertently gifting Tyki one of the most remarkable and versatile substances on earth.

But the Mirror blood wasn’t the point, and nor was the bird skull. Carefully, he took one of the silver-white hairs and shouldered his way into the back room. He poured the bottle of blood into a cast iron kettle and set it over a gas hotplate to heat. With a short gesture he made water from the air and channelled it to trickle into the kettle until he had enough for the tea. While the blood and water mixture boiled, Tyki raided his cupboards for dried mugwort and wood betony. He could hardly think of a more unappealing mix, and when he threw the lot into the roiling kettle along with the hair and a sparrow feather to steep into a tea the smell was enough to make him grimace.

It didn’t take long for the potion to finish, left to simmer for a few minutes, and when it was done Tyki finished the spell by pricking his finger and allowing a drop of his own blood to infuse it. An artificial familiar potion which would guide Tyki’s sight to any sparrow sitting nearby his favourite witch. Twisting his lips in distaste, Tyki poured the tea into a cup, let the blood-and-rust coloured liquid sit and cool for a moment while he dug through a drawer of incense bundles, hesitating over which blend would best support a farsight before throwing it up in a shrug and poking the end of a moon alignment stick into the flame still burning under the empty kettle.

He put the stick in a dusty holder filled with ashes and picked up his mug from the bench while he lowered himself to sit in the middle of the floor. He was certain he hadn’t fucked up, but if there _was_ a backlash for any reason Tyki didn’t much fancy concussing himself on the leg of a table. So, taking in deep breaths and clearing his mind of the cluttering thoughts and endless mental reminders of everything he had to do, Tyki let himself breathe in the clear dusky smell of the incense and let himself sink into the ebb and flow of mana currents swirling around him. The moment he was aware of his readiness, Tyki brought the warm mug to his lips and downed the foul mixture. It tasted of copper and pungent herbs and Tyki let his eyes scrunch closed in his disgust but forced himself to drink the whole thing. Disregarding the distraction of taste, he kept himself open and let the magic carry him through the roof of the building, dragging him to follow a bond until he found himself fifty feet in the air, swooping and snapping at insects.

Tyki guided the sparrow’s eyes away from the darting bugs and urged it down towards the streets. They fluttered and swooped and it took Tyki a moment to realise he hadn’t projected far from the shop. Allen must be on his way then, but Tyki had yet to catch sight of him. For his momentary lapse in focus, the simpleminded bird carried him back up into the air. Its weightless bubble of lightheartedness tugged at Tyki, urged him to lose himself in flight, and Tyki had to ruthlessly direct its attention back to the winding streets below once more.

It was a hassle - sparrows and finches simply weren’t suitable for this kind of magic, their minds too flitting and momentary to meld properly with a caster’s. Tyki often preferred projecting into a cat, or a raven if he could, but sparrows were everywhere and Tyki didn’t want to run two miles on four legs just to find the boy. And - speaking of, the sparrow’s attention had been caught by an insect flicking between blades of unkempt grass growing from cracks in the sidewalk around a certain white-haired boy’s feet.

The bird wouldn’t have taken the bait for fear of the witch, but Tyki urged it to swoop past Allen’s legs and snap the grasshopper in its short beak. They were filled to the brim with a simple, all-consuming pleasure when the carapace crunched in their mouth and Tyki almost lost it again. God, but directing a sparrow’s focus was like reigning in a dragon - the bitch just wouldn’t _listen._

As much as Tyki wanted to sit the bird on Allen’s shoulder and be done with it, that simply wasn’t feasible. To urge a creature to go so drastically against fundamental instinct was nigh on impossible if there wasn’t a legitimate bond between the caster and vessel. Something like the bond between witches and their familiars. Tyki had once managed a similar connection decades ago - a black cat cursed with sentience. She had made a good companion for a short while, but time had left her behind and Tyki moved inexorably forward.

The sparrow swooped ahead of Allen and Tyki struggled to keep it within the confines of the street. It fluttered to the ground to peck at a crust of stale bread and Tyki cast its eyes to Allen when he felt the bird’s prey-instincts shudder uncomfortably. The witch was watching them with vague curiosity while he walked, unconcerned and vaguely bored. It was unusual behaviour for a sparrow to snap a bug from around your legs and not disappear immediately, but it wasn’t as if Tyki cared if Allen realised he was watching. There was no malicious intent, and Allen would surely have been more defensive if he’d sensed one.

Instead a small, amused smile twitched onto his lips and he pulled a tattooed hand out from his pocket, spread his fingers in a small wave and asked easily, a laugh hidden somewhere in his voice, “Are you following me?”

The words were garbled in Tyki’s mind, difficult to understand through the clutter and chatter of the sparrow’s head, but he was pretty sure he got it. Urging the tiny bird to take flight, they fluttered a few meters down the street to alight on the handle of his shop door, cocked their head expectantly down the path to Allen.

His laugh was clear like birdsong in the sparrow’s mind, and it seemed to recognise familiarity from Tyki so it repeated the cadence of the sound as best it could before tucking its beak against its chest and chittering happily.

The closer Allen got the more nervous it became, and Tyki let it flutter off a short way off while the boy opened the door and held it, watching them with an expectant grin. There was a bit of convincing and a lot of wordless reassurance involved, but Tyki managed to wrangle the bird into swooping into the dim store. Allen followed them in and the sparrow let Tyki guide them over the shelves with a promise of food, certain he had a stock of dead grasshoppers and cicadas over with the rest of the potionmaking ingredients.

He found the bag and let the bird peck it open and pluck out a large crunchy piece, more as security for it to stay calm once he left its mind than anything else. From the front of the store Tyki heard Allen call out, “Where can I find you?” and he had the bird flutter back and perch on the doorknob to the back room. He pecked sharply against the wood, the bug still held in their beak, and twisted their head to glance expectantly at Allen.

The boy laughed again and vaulted over the counter without hesitation, and the sparrow swallowed its meal so it could chitter back at him.

It was a strange sensation, to hear the workroom door open from two sets of ears. It wasn’t like his entire consciousness had _left_ his body, after all, and it was best to remove outside stimuli while performing these spells simply to make sure it didn’t slip away. He fluttered through the open door and didn’t have any difficulty lifting his own hand and letting the bird perch there. While it wouldn’t allow itself to be too close to a predator, the temporary bond created a trust between the vessel and the caster which overrode those instincts. Tyki couldn’t harm the bird without harming himself, and the bird understood that inherently.

When Tyki opened his eyes he found Allen leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded, ankles crossed and an amused smirk on his face. Tyki cast him an answering grin, murmured, “Good morning, boy,” and gave a mental poke with what was left of the spell to urge the sparrow out the window he had cracked open for ventilation. “Find your way here alright?”

“You tell me,” Allen countered with a smirk. “Do you have my blood?”

“I do,” Tyki announced while he stood, brushing himself off and picking up the mug of godawful tea, “and it was a nightmare and a half to get, so naturally it’s on special.”

Laughing, Allen observed, “I don’t think you’ve quite grasped how sales work,” but stood back from the door to let Tyki pass.

“How about favours?” Tyki offered, arching an eyebrow at Allen as he passed. He grinned to himself when the boy did that thing of his - shoulders coming up slightly, eyes glancing away, lips pursed while he tried not to smile. Always the same adorable reaction, and Tyki really couldn’t blame himself for wanting to spoil the boy. It wasn’t like giving him cheap blood was going to run Tyki into bankruptcy, but he didn’t think he’d much care if it _did._ He ran the store for fun, after all - if he didn’t have fun with it what was the point?

Embarrassed, Allen mumbled, “You don’t have to do me any favours,” and Tyki couldn’t help but huff an amused laugh. “What?” Allen demanded, shooting him a defensive glare.

Giving him a wry smile, Tyki dipped down to rummage under the counter for a glass bottle and ended up with a steel thermos. “If you’re worried about owing me anything,” he commented lightly, picking up the marker from earlier and scrawling a couple of the same cooling runes onto the steel, “don’t be.”

“You realise saying that makes me _more_ suspicious?” Tyki glanced over and found Allen watching him with something like amusement, something like understated excitement mixed with a touch of apprehension. Elbows propped on the counter, head cocked to look at Tyki and that light touch of pink blush sat so sweetly on his translucently green cheeks that Tyki couldn’t help but remember the way he’d unabashedly pressed his lips to the corner of Tyki’s grin. Fearless, but so, so sensible. “Everything has a price,” he said, those lips curled into a small grin.

“Are you suspicious of me?” Tyki asked, his smirk teasing. Of course he was, of _course._ Anyone who wasn’t was a fool, and Tyki didn’t _like_ fools.

Allen huffed a laugh, amusement winning out, and drew his hands back across the counter until they sat neatly at the edge and Allen was standing straight with his shoulders up. Coy rather than embarrassed, and Tyki loved how quickly he shuffled between the two. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t be,” he said, and Tyki closed his eyes in a laugh.

Neglecting to answer, he passed Allen the thermos and gestured to the keg. “Bring that back full,” he instructed and went back through the door to the workroom. Picking up a piece of chalk from his burned up workbench, Tyki bounced it in his hand and regarded the empty space in the middle of the floor. Well they were invoking so he should start from the spirit point. The pentagram didn’t have to be large, and they weren’t casting a protective charm so an open star would do.

Tyki knelt and marked five points on the wooden floor, scrawled lines of runes between the points - intuition, strength, subtlety of touch, precision, protection. Not that they’d particularly _need_ any of those, but it had become habit long ago for Tyki to inscribe his circles this way. It took him maybe a minute and once he was done he knelt back on his heels to admire his work, cocked his head to ensure the lines were straight and angled correctly.

From over his shoulder he heard, “Did you rune that whole thing?” and glanced back to find Allen peering down at the pentagram, frowning in impressed disbelief. “I was only gone, like, a minute. How’d you do it?” he demanded and walked around, cocking his head to read the lines of ancient script without sparing a glance for Tyki’s smug smirk.

“Eons of practice,” Tyki said lightly and bit his tongue when Allen shot him a reprimanding glance.

“A hundred and fifty years isn’t an _eon,_ thanks,” he stated and Tyki wondered if he should start worrying about how quick Allen was at picking up his slips of the tongue.

“A hundred and fifty- _ish_ years is,” Tyki countered smoothly and stood, brushing off his hands and knees. He tossed the chalk onto the desk and stepped carefully over the pentagram. Making for his storage cupboards, he called back to Allen, “There should be a horse skull lying around - pour the blood in that. And I think I have some candles somewhere too.”

“Which ones do you need?” he asked and Tyki glanced over to find the little witch hadn’t wasted a moment in finding that horse skull. Granted he’d left it out after his last bloodwork ritual, bur still. The boy was quick and Tyki couldn’t say he wasn’t glad for it.

“Should be four black tapers on one of the desks,” he hummed, rummaging through the bundles of dried herbs and pulling out rosemary, lavender and a gnarled root of ginseng. It was absolutely absurd that the teas for blood magic tasted like piss but the herbs they burned were some of the most delicious combinations. But that was just the way things were.

While Tyki was stubbing out the last stick of incense and digging around for one infused with rosemary, Allen stated drily, “If you mean these, I’m sorry to say they’re not tapers.”

Tyki glanced over his shoulder and scoffed at the misshapen lump of black wax Allen was holding up like an accusation. “Is there a wick?” Tyki asked, turning back to the drawer and finally locating the incense he’d been looking for.

“Yes,” Allen answered grudgingly, as though he could hardly believe it himself.

“Then it’s a taper,” Tyki stated and sauntered back to the pentagram with the herbs bundled in his arms. “One on each point,” he directed, gesturing vaguely, “and the skull at the apex.”

“Where are your matches?” Allen asked, kneeling to follow Tyki’s instructions and carefully arranging the burned-down candles at each of the points.

Tyki settled on the floor opposite him and placed the herbs down beside him, shrugged and answered, “No idea.” Allen frowned and looked as though he had some smart comment lined up, but Tyki reached out and, with a gesture somewhere between a pinch and a click, struck a flame above each of the candles’ wicks.

Allen’s frown turned to a scowl and Tyki glanced up at him, lips twitching amusement at Allen’s expression of baffled frustration. “You can’t do that,” Allen stated stubbornly and Tyki ducked his head in a laugh while he reached out to light the incense on one of the flames.

“Well,” he reasoned, shooting Allen a smug grin, “I just did.”

“No, I mean,” Allen countered, scowl darkening while he struggled to figure it out, “you _can’t do that,_ you physically can’t.” He reached out and caught Tyki’s wrist, dragged it across the circle so he could pluck the stick of incense from his fingers and glare down at his unblemished hands. “How did you do that?” he demanded, scanning Tyki’s fingertips for the slightest trace of runes.

Tyki’s smile grew and he let Allen look all he wanted, a small laugh spilling from his lips when he answered simply, “Magic.”

Allen turned his glare back up at him and after a long moment he reluctantly let up on his tight grip around Tyki’s wrist. Slowly, that suspicion coming back stronger than before, he said, “You’re not an alchemist, are you.”

Tyki opened his mouth and then pursed his lips to try smother his smile. Letting his eyes fall away from Allen’s determinedly questioning gaze, Tyki answered vaguely, “I… have dabbled. In alchemy.”

“But you’re not an _alchemist,”_ Allen pressed, leaning forward a little.

Tyki watched from the corner of his eye the way the candles lit the underside of his jaw, the plush curve of his lower lip, the arch of his frowning brows. “I’m not an alchemist,” Tyki confirmed, still smiling that amused smile.

Allen stayed for a moment, eyes scanning Tyki’s face before he sat back with a breathy huff. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you _are,”_ he muttered and dragged the skull across the floor so he could empty the thermos of blood into it.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Tyki answered breezily, accepted the skull from him and placed it at the spirit point of the star.

Allen scoffed a laugh, not at all surprised, and leaned back on his hands. “Need anything else, Mister I-Don’t-Know-What?”

“Spit in that,” Tyki instructed, pointing to the blood-filled skull.

“I’m sorry?” Allen asked, frowning, and glanced between Tyki and the skull.

Tyki couldn’t help but roll his eyes a little when he stated sarcastically, “Well usually I’d ask for your first born son, but I don’t exactly have the patience.”

“Or the orientation,” Allen muttered under his breath and closed his mouth, rolling his jaw to work together a ball of saliva.

“Oh,” Tyki remarked, eyebrows arching, “hello. I guess we’ve reached _that_ point in our acquaintance then.”

Allen shot him an extremely confused look and tucked his hair behind his ear when he leaned over to spit into the blood. Sitting back and wiping his mouth delicately, Allen stated, “You’ve been flirting with me for months and you _didn’t_ know?”

Tyki shrugged easily and began scattering the herbs into the skull, one sprig at a time. He commented easily, “I prefer not to make assumptions.”

Still looking to be confused by the whole thing, Allen demanded, “So why did you _start?”_

Tyki frowned, returned his confused look and answered simply, “Because I like you. Why else?”

After a moment Allen blinked and admitted, “No idea.” He leaned back on his hands and watched Tyki work, the small frown still sitting between his brows like an unasked question.

At length Tyki huffed and reached for the stick of incense Allen still held between his fingers. He stated, a hint of frustration biting into his voice, “I need a clear mind to manifest the spell and you’re distracting me with your silence so spit it out.”

“Um,” Allen glanced down at the black candles dripping wax onto the floor and sat up straighter, clearing his throat. “Not, um. I was just, uh, wondering… why?” he asked, hesitant and unsure when he glanced up at Tyki with a kind of vulnerable confusion.

Tyki frowned, cocked his head to the side and returned, “Why, what?”

Allen’s eyes went to where he was picking at a knot in the wooden floor with his fingernail and Tyki could see that sweet blush of his spreading across his pale cheeks while he struggled to say, “Why do you, um. _Like_ me?”

Tyki scoffed and rolled his eyes, muttered, “You really _are_ twelve, aren’t you?” and laughed at Allen’s immediate bitter glare.

“Seventeen,” he corrected, biting, and Tyki nodded like it made a difference. It did, it _did,_ but time stopped meaning so much after so long had passed, and it was funny to see the little witch so defensive over so little of it.

Returning to the question at hand, Tyki offered, “Why don’t you figure it out for yourself?” and loved how incredibly expressive Allen’s unimpressed glare was.

 _“One_ reason,” he bargained, and it was kind of endearing in a way. No, it was _definitely_ endearing. The pouty glare, the embarrassed blush, the stubborn set to his jaw.

“Because I love how angry you look every time I speak to you.”

Scowling, Allen muttered, “I don’t look angry every time you speak to me,” and blushed again when he caught sight of Tyki’s arched eyebrow. “I don’t _mean_ to,” he tried and Tyki snorted a laugh.

“Clear minds, boy,” he reminded, waving it away. “I’ll tell you later if you want, but it won’t do for _both_ of us to be distracted by my crush.”

“Your _crush,”_ Allen groaned and buried his burning face in his knees, much to Tyki’s amusement. “If you’re a hundred and fifty, shouldn’t you be _old?”_ he demanded petulantly into his knees. “Why do you have a _crush?”_

“Stop thinking about it,” Tyki commanded with a light scowl, “I’m beginning to think the reason you can’t do this is because you’re so easily distracted.”

Tyki watched as Allen pulled himself together with a huff, sitting up and closing his eyes. He took a couple of deep breaths, embarrassment receding in the face of a calm, collected, still-blushing witch who was more than determined to learn a spell that would actually _work_ for him. _“Okay,”_ he sighed on a breathy exhale, finally opening his eyes and nodding firmly when Tyki arched a brow at him to ask if he was ready. “So,” he said, gesturing to the pentagram they’d arranged, “what’s this? And why did I spit in the blood?”

“It’s a Revelation,” Tyki answered easily and pushed himself to stand. The incense stick still burning dusty rosemary in his hand, Tyki took it to the holder on the counter and slipped it into the hole. While he was up he tugged dark, heavy curtains over the windows and walked around Allen and the circle to close the door to the workroom. When he turned off the fluorescent bulb the room was plunged into darkness, the only light coming from the short candles and whatever seeped around the edges of the curtains. As he lowered himself to sit back down opposite the skull at the spirit point of the star, Tyki finished, “And you spat in it because we’re casting on you.”

“See,” Allen sighed a little apprehensive, “I _thought_ you were going to say that, but…”

Tyki snorted and shrugged, countered, “Look, if you want to learn the essence of a random rat’s life then go ahead, but what I’m going to teach you is how to discover something useful.”

Stubborn but acquiescing, Allen grumbled, “So why didn’t _you_ spit in the blood?”

“Because I don’t count and it would be a hassle to break down all the glamours I have to _prevent_ these kinds of spells being cast on me. Not to mention the fact I have glamours to prevent these kinds of spells being cast on me,” Tyki answered drily. “No offence, but you can’t _possibly_ have as many secrets as I do.”

Allen huffed a laugh and dipped his head, allowing that. “Before we actually cast though,” Allen added, glancing up from beneath his gold-lit fringe with a teasing grin, “are you going to tell me how to make it?”

Tyki glanced down at the bowl of blood and then back over at Allen’s patiently expectant face, the boy’s lips twitching a little when he saw Tyki’s taken aback reaction. So teaching generally included actually, like. Explaining stuff. ...Huh. Okay not exactly Tyki’s forte, but he could  _try,_ right? So he pursed his lips and gestured to the pentagram as a whole and said, “I don’t think I have to explain the basics of an invocation circle - start drawing from the spirit point down to earth, air, fire, water,” he gestured and mimicked drawing the lines with his hand. “You’re probably used to sitting at the spirit point and having your bloodspell in the centre, right?” he asked, cocking his head to try recall how exactly the witches casted glamours and charms.

Allen nodded and added, “And candles arranged on intersections and points with regard to where you want the energies focused.”

“Right,” Tyki nodded, “well… we want them focused on spirit. So the candles draw from the other elements and the lines carry it all to the apex. I take it you know the classes of mana?” he waited for Allen’s nod. “This is an extension of mind reading. We’re rummaging around in your memories for truths - so, black.”

Allen frowned a little, concentrating on the lines, and gave a firm nod. Tyki couldn’t help his small smile, enamoured by the attentive focus written in the boy’s face. Allen bit his lip, eyes running over the lines of energies Tyki couldn’t actually _see,_ and asked, “What about backlash? I put the spell in the middle to keep it contained.” He glanced up at Tyki with the question and Tyki saw the concern in his nervous hands, soothed only by trust that Tyki knew what he was doing. He’d been hit with it before, naturally. There wasn’t a witch alive who hadn’t, and Tyki wasn’t much a fan of his own memories of the experience. With the knowledge that Allen had long been practicing magic he wasn’t aligned with, Tyki could only imagine the tenacity he must have to keep throwing himself into it.

Once, twice, a hundred times burned, but Allen wasn’t the least bit shy. _Respectful,_ and aware of what could happen if he fucked up. But not shy. So Tyki smiled a coy smile, smug because this was the magic Allen _deserved_ to know. “There won’t _be_ a backlash,” he said, voice gilded in simple confidence. In himself and in what he knew, and in the black alignment of the magic he could smell like dust in Allen’s veins. “The sooner you let yourself believe it, the sooner it’ll be true.”

Allen was silent for a moment, contemplating the circle carefully before exhaling a gusty sigh that flickered the low candles. “Magic is stupid,” he muttered, scowling because he understood exactly what Tyki meant.

Grinning, he agreed, “It’s incredibly stupid. What does that make us?”

“Idiots,” Allen answered with a wry smile still directed at the energy lines of the circle.

“Well,” Tyki allowed, “I was going to say geniuses, but. Each to their own.” Allen snorted a laugh and Tyki had to bite back his amusement so he could continue his explanation of the spell they were about to work. He pointed over to the counter, drawing Allen’s eyes to the thin ribbon of smoke trailing and fraying from the incense. “Rosemary.”

“For remembrance,” Allen finished for him, giving a small nod. He glanced back and gave an embarrassed grin, reasoning, “I use it a lot.”

Tyki cocked his head a little, smiling lightly while his sharp eyes scanned Allen’s face. “You don’t strike me as absent-minded,” he murmured and Allen’s expression closed up in into a disarming smile like the distractingly pretty wings of a butterfly. A couple of pieces coming together, too few to form an image, Tyki grinned and observed, “Rosemary and rue is an interesting combination to make your favourite.”

“It’s cheap,” Allen laughed and opened his eyes from that smile so he could look down at the circle, intent on drawing Tyki’s attention away.

“There are cheaper combinations on my shelves,” he countered, still watching Allen keenly. Rosemary and rue, rosemary and rue. The two seperate could have any number of properties, and together they clashed and complimented and found completely new uses, the most common being... Rosemary for remembrance and rue for repentance. Eyes on the hands folded neatly in Allen’s lap, polite for all he was tense, the word fell from Tyki’s lips without a thought. “Penance.”

His gaze flickered up to Allen’s face, caught his eyes going sharp with surprise before that veneer of pleasantry was pulled back over his expression. “Sorry?” he asked, frowning like he hadn’t heard.

Tyki snorted a dry laugh and shook his head, leaning back on his hands while he said, “We’re about to cast a Revelation on you, you realise. Secrecy is just about off the cards.”

Allen closed his eyes in another smile and reasoned simply, “If I tell you that secret now it really _will_ be off the cards.” He opened his eyes, shot Tyki a knowing smirk and said, “Then you’d get two off me in one sitting.”

Tyki chuckled and shook his head, letting it slide. Allen was clever - and not having as many secrets as Tyki meant fuck all as a comparison, considering he had _just that many._ More than could be read in a Revelation - more than could be told in a lifetime. Having two or three or twenty wasn’t _nothing_ \- it was just negligible. “Well,” he allowed, still grinning, “out of respect for your privacy, let’s not focus on that.”

“Respect for my privacy,” Allen repeated with a laugh and it didn't sound forced at all - genuinely entertained, in a way that made Tyki crack a smile with a mirrored sentiment. Containing himself, Allen gestured to the blood and asked, “So what’s in that?”

“Bits and pieces,” Tyki shrugged. “I’ll write it out for you, but - herbs to stimulate clarity and focus, more rosemary. Can’t go wrong with that in spells like these. And,” he added, fishing in his pocket, “eyebright,” he stated, holding up a small bottle of eyedrops.

“We need that?” Allen asked skeptically, arching a brow.

 _“I_ need that,” Tyki corrected, “because as easy as I make this all seem, I don’t actually have the sight for it.”

“So you’re not an alchemist,” Allen counted, lips curling in amusement, “and you’re not a witch. You’re not a djinn, phoenix or oracle.”

“Oracle,” Tyki snorted derisively and shook his head disparagingly before tilting it back to look at the ceiling, dripping the solution into the corners of his eyes and blinking it through.

“Not a fan?” Allen grinned and Tyki wiped a finger beneath his eye to catch a drop that fell like a faux tear when he straightened his head.

Tyki scowled at the clear drop sitting on his fingertip with the thought that an _oracle_ would have seen it as an omen. He flicked his hand, dislodged the drop and dried his finger on his pants. “If there’s one thing magic can’t do, it’s show the future.”

“That’s not all an oracle does,” Allen insisted, still entertained and watching Tyki with a keen interest. Tyki cast him a slyly amused glance, recognising the boy’s leading statements. Digging, digging for answers without asking questions. Enticing Tyki into giving up what he knew without having to ask for it. He was clever, and he knew some tricks. He reminded Tyki of himself a little. A little. It was a long, long time ago that Tyki had been like this little witch, and he realised he was correct now in thinking those he’d learned from had only taught him from amused interest. Amused interest and a brutal underestimation. It was cockiness, he knew. The undeterrable self-belief that no one could _possibly_ be better. It was an integral belief in the face of harnessing strong, wild magics, and it was more often than not a caster’s downfall. So, what should Tyki do? Play it safe, as the fates of all his own mentors suggested?

Of course not. Of _course_ not. He was bored and old and had finally found something to capture his attention for a moment - of _course_ he wouldn’t heed caution. His life had never been one of taking a safe route, and Allen would expire long before he posed a threat to _Tyki._ So he saw all the signs, saw all the warnings, and made an executive decision to ignore each one and indulge the little witch. So on the subject of _what an oracle does,_ Tyki snorted a sardonic laugh at a joke only he knew the punchline to and refuted, “Whatever they tell you, they’re not talking to _gods,_ that’s for sure.” Allen’s head cocked in light interest, eyes silently thrilled in a way that prompted Tyki to continue without a word of encouragement. “Spirits, maybe. Higher elementals. Demons sometimes - they often forget to keep an eye out for those.”

Allen frowned brief confusion and stated, “I didn’t think there were any demons left.”

Tyki shrugged lightly and reasoned, “I only know what I know.”

Allen grinned and leaned forwards a bit, hardly bothering to mask his thirst for knowledge when he asked, “So what _do_ you know?”

Tyki arched a brow and smirked, let his expression read that every word from his mouth was an indulgence. “You interested in demons, boy?”

“Who isn’t?” he countered, not the least bit abashed at having been caught.

“Clever people,” Tyki answered readily and laughed when Allen grinned.

“Thought we established we’re idiots.”

“You, maybe,” Tyki snorted. With a wry shrug he explained, “There are a few - so far as I know the Leviathan is still kicking around somewhere at the bottom of the seas, but the merfolk and selkies haven’t seen hide or tail for centuries. But when the gods died the demons couldn’t feed off chaotic mana, and had to start consuming magical creatures instead.”

“When the gods _died?”_ Allen sat up sharply, eyes on Tyki with such piercing interest that even Tyki’s gut knew this wasn’t a conversation he could worm his way out of. Not without difficulty, or...

Fuck it, he didn’t have time to explain the history of the universe. Smoothly he reached out, black mana flowing through his blood down his arm to the fingertips he placed against Allen’s forehead. In a moment, he’d weeded out the delicate sprout of the memory of the past few seconds before it had time to properly take root and sat back, repeated nonchalantly, “So far as I know, the Leviathan is still kicking about at the bottom of the seas.”

Allen blinked and frowned, brought a hand up to touch his brow where Tyki’s fingers had rested a moment ago. Confused, he glanced around then back at Tyki. “Did you already say that?” he asked, and Tyki gave an unconcerned shrug. “Why were you…” he trailed and rubbed a little at his frown as though to clear away the fog of missing the past few seconds.

“You had something,” Tyki gestured vaguely to his face and shrugged again. “It’s gone now,” he reassured when Allen accepted that and scrubbed a bit more purposefully at his brow. In his closed fist Tyki held the memory, warm and tiny beneath his curled fingers. Allen wouldn’t see if he released it - regardless of the boy's black alignment, Tyki was still the only being he knew of who could perceive a physical memory - but an indulgent desire to keep it held Tyki’s hand closed. He slipped his hand into his pocket and put it there, bound it so it wouldn’t disappear. His brief brush against Allen’s thoughts had been… interesting. Like a flash of everything looking _brighter_ than Tyki remembered, a hundred questions buzzing under his skin and his attention entirely, wholly on Tyki.

Allen hummed and bit his cheek, recounted what Tyki had been saying and perked when he caught the tail of it. He tried to try keep his piqued interest lowkey but Tyki smirked when he saw right through that half hearted mask. The boy asked, forsaking any pretense, “The Leviathan is one of the Higher Demons, right?”

The warm amusement in Tyki's belly began to cool off at his words, slowly being replaced with something like discomfort. Apprehension, but nothing so strong as that. A slight concern for this boy, and whatever his intentions might be. “One of,” he allowed briefly, and from the tilt of Allen’s shoulders he knew the witch had picked up on his reluctance. “But they’re gone for the most part, and are none of your or my concern.”

“For the most part,” Allen pressed, just to see how far he could take it.

“It’s impossible to say,” Tyki stated blandly, “so best to keep from thinking about it.”

The witch watched him keenly for a long moment and Tyki kept his gaze, patient and immovable until Allen relented with a small shrug and allowed, “Fair enough,” and rearranged himself to be more comfortable in his cross-legged position.

Tyki turned his attention back to the circle and, with the eyebright working its magic, could see the faintest current of energies. “For the record,” he said, wry, “I’m never teaching you summoning. That’s fucked up dangerous.”

Allen laughed, the tension in his posture melting along with Tyki’s brief coldness when he admitted, “No need. I taught myself, tried a hundred times and couldn’t even call an imp.”

Impulsively, Tyki reached out and smacked him across back of the head, just hard enough to give him a shock. “Don’t,” he said firmly, holding out his finger as though he was scolding a dog.

Allen scowled and rubbed the back of his head, complained, “Ow?” and looked like he was second guessing asking Tyki for help.

Tyki, firm, insisted, “Clairvoyance? Dumb and impossible, but whatever. Necromancy? _Really_ fucking dumb, but whatever. But you’d be better off walking yourself to the gates of hell than having a demon drag your ass there.”

“Been there?” Allen muttered, relenting and dropping his hand from his head.

“Been there,” Tyki stated, grim. “Don’t fuck with demons.”

Allen squinted at him for a long moment before saying, “You’re not an exorcist. They don’t live that long.”

“They don’t live long at all,” Tyki agreed, mouth still pressed into an unimpressed line, “cause they fuck with demons.”

 _“Okay,”_ the witch groaned and rolled his eyes, leaned back on his hands with a huff of exasperation, “I get it. No summonings, no demons. I’ll keep it clean.”

 _“Good,”_ Tyki bit out and forced the tension from his body in a sharp sigh. “If I have to tell you twice, just know it’ll be _me_ dragging your ass to hell,” he muttered.

Allen commented, wry and sarcastic, “Guess that makes you a demon, then,” and Tyki felt his lips twitch in amusement.

“Are you focusing or are you shittalking?” was his only retort and Allen snorted a quick laugh. “Okay,” he started when he saw the boy was settled in and attentive, “I’ll write the whole spell up for you - I’ll have to change a few things so it works for a witch, but… How’s your Latin?”

He caught Allen’s short grimace and snorted a laugh when he lied, “Passable.”

“Well,” Tyki commented wryly, “you may want to work on that. Your invocation will need to be a bit more complex than mine,” he admitted and pulled in a reaffirming breath, watched the energies flow through the pentagram.

“Why’s that?” Allen asked curiously.

Tyki didn’t lift his eyes from the spell when he answered distractedly, “Because I know what I’m doing and am aware of every way this could go wrong and don’t need to waste words controlling my own magic. Now shut up and tell me your deep, dark secrets.” Allen huffed a laugh but quietened, and Tyki used the silence to calm his breathing and focus his desires, coalesced the spell into a single thought. A desire, bone deep, to  _know_ him.

Tyki curled his fingers into an invocation sigil, let the black mana in his core flow through his body and imbued it with magic that resonated with the pentagram. Allen wouldn’t be able to do that, witches being conductors of mana more than generators of it, but it was the only way Tyki could connect himself with the pentagram. He blinked, watched the energy feed into the bloodspell. When he was satisfied with its strength he incanted, _“Permissum verum fulsi pur,"_ on a quiet breath.

Words like golden fire inscribed themselves in the air, burning shapes coalescing into the figures of letters. They shifted and changed, flickered unsteadily while they sought truths from Allen’s memories, and Tyki held the spell together so they could settle, his eyes scanning the letters until they were legible. Allen made a small sound beside him, something like a rabbit finding itself in a fox’s den, but Tyki could only scowl in confusion a the cryptic Revelation.

 _The youngest of witches, for witch he is not_ _  
_ _This reflection is letting his bloodmagic rot_

“Well,” Tyki commented, continuing to feed the spell so he could memorise the words. His eyes scanned over the spell and his mind turned them over and over as he tried to determine what it _meant._ Allen was sitting tense beside him, wound tight as a coiled basilisk, and Tyki gave a dry smile without tearing his eyes away from the burning words. “I could be wrong,” he began, more amused than anything, “but it seems there was a bit of hypocrisy involved in your amusement at my reluctance to expose my true nature.”

“A bit,” Allen admitted with a tense laugh and Tyki closed his eyes, watched the Revelation burn behind his eyelids for a moment before he released the invocation and cut off the stream of mana he was feeding into the spell.

The room dimmed beyond his closed eyes and Tyki breathed deeply, taking in the scent of rosemary. His pocket was warm with the memory he’d taken, his fingertips were tingling with magic and his mind was abuzz with questions _._ What could disguise itself as a witch? Several creatures came to mind and Tyki felt a small frown pinch his brows. Witches aligned yellow mana almost without exception. Healing, plant magic, blood manipulation. Anything to do with altering the state of living things. And here Allen was, blatantly flaunting his black alignment. Tyki had thought it was an anomaly - had _assumed_ it was. The boy wasn’t... he couldn't be  _human,_ could he?

Oh god, no, Tyki shot that idea right out of his head. He wasn’t, he _couldn’t_ . Humans couldn’t _use_ magic, could only take in the mana that existed in the environment around them. Tyki remembered with punity the bizarre power humans had had before the death of the last god, when magic was unlimited and chaotic. Allen wasn’t human. He wasn’t a medium taking in the mana of ghosts and the departed - and he wasn’t a _thing_ like the humans of old _._ God, Tyki remembered the chaos of white mana. Remembered one of the humans he’d manipulated into helping him back then. White alignment was dangerous and unpredictable. Raw mana, without direction. It only existed in djinns now. Their wishes, their pure _creation._ Creation with intention; white magic, contained. Well, djinns and Mirrors. Mirrors hardly counted though. Blemished. White blood all wrapped up in yellow mana, like a creamiscle.

A creamsicle, which Allen was… not? Tyki pulled in a deep, quiet breath through his nose, seeing what he could smell of that blood. Allen was delicious, he’d known all along, but he’d thought it was simply all the magic under his skin, the black mana Tyki could sense in him. A black and yellow creamsicle? Surely not. _Surely._ Tyki darted his tongue out, imagined he could taste it, and he felt Allen’s magic shudder like a mouse sitting in the den of a blind viper. Black black black, thick and tantalising, and it was only because he was  _looking_ for it that he caught the thin sugar-glass-yellow of a transformative magic. 

Tyki opened his eyes, lifted his consciousness away from the lower channels of mana he’d been sinking into and pinned Allen’s patiently amused expression with a contemplative look. Patiently amused, like his heart wasn’t pounding black-painted blood around his body five times faster than it should have been. A black and yellow creamsicle. Tyki hazarded the only other viable option, a diversion. “The only thing that comes to mind is an incubus.”

Allen laughed and dipped his head, his relief obvious in the way his blood calmed when he asked, amused, “Do I look like an incubus to you?”

Tyki grinned, suspicions confirmed. Allen didn't even know. He didn't need to know. God, he was a  _Mirror._ Tyki was almost appalled Allen had let him cast a Revelation. There were only ever three kinds of Mirrors, after all - mad with paranoia, mad with aggressive caution, and dead. All that magic was like a buffet to supernaturals - Tyki wouldn't need to eat for something like ten years if he were inclined to consume Allen. And, well. It wasn't that he  _wasn't_ inclined, but. He'd had a Mirror or ten before, and they were  _delicious._ But he'd still be delicious whenever Tyki got bored of him, and he could see this distraction lasting some time at least. So he answered, smug and amused, “You definitely look like you could be," and grinned when it made that pretty blush come back.

“Oh my god,” Allen laughed, surprised, and turned his head away with an embarrassed hand pressed against his mouth while tried to beg, _“Dooon’t.”_ The commanding effect was completely lost by the redness in his cheeks and the way his shoulders shook with laughter.

Tyki grinned at the cute little Mirror, a hundred unspoken details falling into place. God but the white hair was a dead fucking giveaway, how had Tyki _not_ made the connection before? And of course he was living as a witch, _of course._ No-one fucked with witches, and if anyone smelled the intoxicatingly thick magic in his blood it was all the more reason to avoid him. Witches were respected and powerful and dangerous, and more magic could only mean more trouble.

Tyki hid his small smile and pushed himself to stand, went to the window so he could pull the curtains back. “Guess you get to keep your secrets today,” he offered lightheartedly and Allen made a sound as though daring to hope. Light flooded the room and Tyki turned to find him squinting and rubbing his eye against the brightness before his face scrunched and he caught a photosensitive sneeze on his sleeve. And, be still his heart, the Allen wiggled his nose afterwards was quite possibly the cutest thing he'd ever seen.

He sniffed a little and looked up at Tyki with a blissfully hopeful expression, asked, “So you’ve _no_ idea what I am?” with a small grin. 

Tyki laughed and lied, “Haven’t a clue,” as he came back to blow out the candles, then flashed him a devilish grin. “But I like to think I'm very clever.”

Allen rolled his eyes and muttered, “Hopefully not _that_ clever,” but picked up the horse skull and swirled around what remained of the blood spell. “Can I keep this?” he asked, determining it worth another Revelation at least.

“I’ll need the skull,” Tyki allowed, “but sure. The thermos should still be around there somewhere,” he gestured around the legs of the worktables and pried the melted-down candles from the floor. Allen looked around for where it might have rolled and Tyki scuffed his shoe through the chalky runes of the pentagram, candles in hand. He'd never been in the habit of leaving casting circles just laying around, regardless of if they were for binding or not. It was more instinct than precaution at this point. 

While Tyki moved to put the candles out of the way on a clear part of the workbench, he heard Allen ask abruptly, “Is that my coat?”

Tyki glanced over before the words sunk in, an easy, “Hm?” on his lips at the demanding tone. Oh. Yeah. That. “Huh,” he remarked as though he’d only just realised the white coat with the furred hood was hanging on the back of his workroom door, “I believe it is your coat.” Lightly, he commented, “Funny how lost things have ways of turning up again.”

Allen, not fooled for a moment, guessed drily, “You stole it, didn’t you?” He was already shedding his white hoodie, baring his tattooed arms for Tyki’s silent and almost-subtle appreciation while he stood from the floor and reached to unhook the charmed coat from the peg.

“That’s very accusatory,” Tyki stated mildly, making no move to stop him from shrugging it on. Allen sighed happily when it settled around his shoulders, and Tyki’s interest piqued at the subtle swell of black mana he felt flow from Allen to suffuse the jacket. Without missing a beat he reasoned, “You were the one who left it here. Perhaps I was just looking after it for you.” Intrigued, he stepped closer. Now that the subject had come up he wanted desperately to have a look at it - especially considering it was about to slip out of his hands.

Allen grinned and lifted a hand to poke at Tyki’s chest, fingers curled around the edge of the too-long sleeve while he countered, “And, what, you never thought to give it back?”

“What can I say?” Tyki smirked, reached out to lift one curtain of the open front and peered in at the lining of the jacket. He didn't actually expect anything as obvious as runes appearing where there had been none before, and was a little shocked at the simplicity when that was exactly what he found. The spell glowed a dull burnt orange with alchemy and blood magic, faint beneath the lining of the coat. Distracted, Tyki absently finished his thought with a murmured, “I was intrigued,” and lifted the other side of the coat to find the same runes. That kind of orange glow could only come from a mix of yellow and red mana, and Tyki hadn’t seen a spell so stable in, what, two thousand years?

He pursed his lips, quietly impressed, and glanced up to find Allen watching him with a quietly dry expression. Eyebrows arched, he asked, “You good?”

Tyki lifted his hands in supplication and stepped back, let the coat fall to sit naturally while Allen let his expression fall into an entertained grin. Tyki, more than impressed, asked, “Who gave you that?” and resisted the urge to keep playing around with it, maybe pull the fur-lined hood up and see if there were runes in there that also reacted to Allen’s magic.

“I made it,” he answered simply, and that certainly gave Tyki pause.

He opened his mouth, a hundred things to say, and after a short moment settled on murmuring, _“Oh.”_

Allen frowned and didn’t seem quite sure what to make of that response. “What does that mean?” he demanded, almost tense.

Tyki waved his hand reassuringly, brushed past Allen and opened the door to the main room. “No, no,” he hummed easily, “it’s not bad or anything. I just… have questions,” he said while he crouched down at the counter and rifled around on the shelves for a notepad and pen.

“Like…?” Allen led, following Tyki to lean his hip against the counter and fold his arms across his chest, no longer defensive so much as intrigued.

Like, did he actually _know_ what kind of magic that was and just how fucking difficult it was to get right? “How you did it, for starters,” he muttered, finding a pen but no paper.

“A clever guy like you,” Allen teased while Tyki stood to rummage around the countertop. “Can’t you figure it out?”

Tyki pinned him with a look and stated, “I can think of several ways, actually. I want to know how _you_ did it.”

He snorted a laugh like he didn’t quite believe that, but seemed fond enough of Tyki to lean his elbows on the counter and explain, “I dyed some thread in my blood and embroidered the runes onto an inner lining. Took me months to get the spell right, and another three weeks to stitch it all.” He picked a slim leather bound notebook out of the clutter and flipped through it absently, thumbing at the worn edges of the paper. “Not sure why it’s orange - read a few books but couldn’t find anything. But it works,” he shrugged.

Tyki reached over to pluck the book from his hands, cleared a small space and flipped to a new page. “It’s the alchemy,” he answered Allen's unasked question while he uncapped the pen and began scrawling the recipe he’d used for the Revelation onto the stained paper. “When mana mixes, the colour changes.” Obviously.

“I…” Allen inclined his head with a confused frown, “didn’t know magic _could_ mix.”

Tyki arched a brow and glanced pointedly at Allen’s coat before looking back to the page. What, so he'd just been fooling around with magic and had _accidentally_ reinvented a lost art? Tyki only said, “It’s incredibly difficult to get right.”

“No kidding,” Allen muttered and pushed up, drummed his fingers against the edge of the counter for a moment while he thought. Eventually he asked, “How does it work then? I don’t have an... orange alignment. That I know of." Yeah, because he hadn't known he'd been black this whole time. That was probably an important amendment. But Tyki knew, and he knew that Allen didn't have a touch of red in him. 

He smirked and finished up his quick sketch of the pentagram’s setup, teased, “What, a clever boy like you?” and glanced up to catch Allen rolling his eyes in a huff of exasperation.

The boy planted his hand on the counter and vaulted over, wandering over to a nearby shelf with his hands in his pockets. Tyki kept his expectant silence while Allen crouched to squint at some of the dusty books there, and it was only when Tyki had held out for a half minute that he shot a scathing look over his shoulder. "Are you going to tell me or are you going to be childish about it?"

Tyki laughed and continued with the spell while he said, “No-one has an orange alignment. So far as I know, it doesn’t exist.”

“So why does it _work?”_ Allen insisted, standing and leaning close to sniff at a plant growing from a mason jar.

Tyki pursed his lips for a moment, considering this whole thing. “The magic,” he said slowly, “isn’t coming from the spell.”

Allen lifted his hand to poke one of the leaves and glanced over with a frown. “Well, sure it is,” he countered. “It’s coming from the blood in the thread.”

“It’s,” Tyki started and shook his head on an awkward laugh before refuting, “it’s not. When you cast blood magic as an alchemical spell it’s not... it’s a _spell,_ yes , but. The spell is a conduit, not... The runes direct the magic, but the magic comes from _you_. The coat is just a tool.”

Allen still seemed confused. “But I’m not... I’m not bleeding, I’ve never been anemic while wearing it,” he scowled, glancing at his hand to check the tone of his skin.

“It’s not blood magic," Tyki reasoned. "It’s not yellow mana.”

“But,” Allen insisted, “the runes-”

“Are a _conduit,”_ Tyki repeated and stopped writing, propped his elbows on the desk and looked up at Allen with a small smile. He fiddled with the pen between his hands while he tried to explain, “It just so happens that when yellow and red are used together they conduct black magic better than any other alchemy.”

This definitely seemed to shock him, eyes going wide in surprise when he remarked, “What, really?”

Tyki… might have been concerned, if he was the kind of person who got concerned. How many hundreds of thousands of people in history had died from magical mishaps? From trying new things without knowing what they were doing, or how the magic would react? What exactly had gone down in those few months that Allen had spent trying to get this spell right? But… well. He was innovative, and innovators didn’t _always_ die young. Allen was still alive and well for the most part, and he had a coat that would never be too warm or too cool. Honestly that was a win-win from Tyki’s perspective, and the boy seemed to have done well with his strange witch-magic-and-black-mana alignment up until now. Urging caution at this point would be stupid - and chances were that Allen wouldn’t pay attention anyway. And besides, Tyki had never gotten anywhere by being _cautious._ How ridiculous, to expect the same from a kid who was reviving lost techniques just to keep himself comfortable in the winter.

So rather than make some speech about the delicacy of experimenting with magic, he just hummed ambivalently and went back to the spell, saying, “Someone probably wrote a book on it, back when Exile-” he cut himself short, lips pressed into an unimpressed line while his hand stilled on the page. Was he ever,  _ever_ going to figure that shit out? People didn’t _know_ about the gods, they didn’t _know_ where Exile City got its name. They didn't know about the barrier. Just. Stop trying to talk about it. Stop talking about it. He huffed a short, sharp sigh out of his nose and amended, “Someone’s probably written a book on it.”

“Why do you keep doing that?” Allen asked, amused, and Tyki almost groaned. It wasn’t even that he was perceptive, Tyki was just _bad._ “You start to say something, then say something else instead.”

“It is...” he sighed, going back to work on the incantation, _“far_ easier. To not have to explain some things.”

Tyki could almost _hear_ how Allen’s eyes narrowed when he pried, keen on digging everything he could out of Tyki's slips, “What things?”

He cast the boy with his weary expression and when Allen snickered a laugh he didn’t bother to elaborate, just put his attention back to the spell.

While Allen wandered around the store, simultaneously distant yet close enough to keep up an absent line of random questions, Tyki continued scrawling down the recipe for the spell on a piece of paper and answering wherever he could be bothered. When he finished it was messy with redactions and notes scrawled in the margin and Tyki held it up with a frown. It looked like every other page in his spellbooks, sure enough, but that probably wasn’t what he should be aiming for here. More on the side of legibility, perhaps. 

Allen, who had circled back around to the counter, snatched it out of his hand and turned it around to read. Tyki gave him an unimpressed look - one he missed in favour of scanning over the page and announcing, “I can’t understand a word of this.”

“I was about to re-write it,” Tyki commented drily and reached out to snatch it back. Allen kept it out of his reach, eyes still scanning the page as he turned his back and leaned against the counter, apparently intent on deciphering Tyki’s notes on the alchemical repurposing of mana. “You can’t use that for a spell,” he said. "It's halfway through a transposition to witch magic.”

“What do you mean,” Allen said distractedly, “a _transposition?_ Magic isn’t transposable, is it?”

Tyki rolled his eyes and gestured to the paper in Allen’s hand. “You see me transposing?” he reasoned, dry. “It’s possible.”

 _“How?”_ Allen insisted, peering closer at the notes as though proximity would help him comprehend a theory that had taken Tyki decades to even understand, centuries to apply and probably several millennia to become proficient at.

“With great difficulty,” he stated, and stretched across the counter to pluck the page from Allen’s hand, “and unfortunately I’m all out of patience for teaching today,” he added, with a short grin to soften the words.

Allen, interested as ever, planted his elbows on the counter and watched Tyki work, cocking his head cutely as he tried to read upside down. _“Could_ you teach me?” he asked, watching Tyki jot down assumptions and calculations.

“Not at all,” Tyki answered honestly, rummaging through his thoughts to pull up memories he'd stolen from the mind of a long-dead alchemist so he could try factor in how exactly he was meant to recalculate this as a yellow magic spell for, well. Black mana. God, this was definitely something new. What were the chances the magic would backfire and consume Allen’s body and soul, dragging his corporeal existence through the veil to the dead?

...Well, they weren’t _negligible,_ but Tyki had faith in his spells and faith in Allen’s magic and he hadn’t seen a zombie in at least ten years so it would be amusing, if nothing else. Aaaand that… should just about do it. Tyki tore the sheet out of the book, shook it to dry the ink and folded it neatly in half before offering it out to Allen with a small amount of smug ceremony.

Allen immediately unfolded the page and read through the spell with a small excited grin. “I feel compelled to ask,” he commented while he scanned over it. While he was reading, Tyki busied himself with clearing a space on the counter so he could lift himself to stand up on it. "Is there any chance this could go wrong?"

“Well,” Tyki hummed distractedly while he picked out several sprigs of the sage hanging from the ceiling, and his initial instinct was to say no. The thought of zombies came back and he hesitated. “I mean…”

Allen snorted and reminded, “You’re meant to say ‘Not at all, nothing could be safer!’,” and when Tyki glanced down with arched brows he found the boy grinning up at him.

“I’m not in the habit of lying,” he lied and dropped from the counter to place the sage on the surface before ducking back down and looking for a bottle to fill with Allen’s ox blood.

“Right,” Allen laughed, not fooled for a moment, and Tyki found he was more than a little enamoured by his unconcerned disbelief. Which was… ridiculous and probably very backwards. But it wasn’t like he cared about being backwards. Tyki was far, _far_ too old to care. He liked Allen and that was reason enough to be charmed. He was, after all, very charming.

Remarkable as it was, he actually managed to find a container within a reasonable amount of time and... Okay so a mason jar wasn’t ideal, but it was big enough and the lid was probably watertight and - what the hell the boy was probably going to be keeping it in the fridge anyway, what did he care? So Tyki stood and dusted it off a little before handing it over the counter to Allen. He gestured for Allen to fill it up while he pulled a length of twine from under some of the clutter and used it to bind the sage sprigs together.

While he wrapped the herbs in soft tissue paper he’d had on hand, Allen asked, “How much will it be for all this?” and nodded his head to encompass the blood and the sage and the spell and Tyki’s wonderful company.

“I told you it was on special,” Tyki reminded lightly, leaning his hip against the counter and snapping a plastic bag out so he could pack in the jar Allen handed him, lid sealed tight, and carefully place the sage and folded-up spell in with it.

“For the small price of a kiss,” Allen teased, and Tyki glanced up to find him watching keenly with amused consideration.

It wasn't hesitation - not really. He didn't seem  _hesitant._ Suspicious, maybe, if suspicion weren't such a bad thing. Cautious. For all that Tyki iterated that it was a favour, that it was a gift, that Allen didn't owe him anything - Tyki couldn't at all blame him for caution. There was a price on everything, true enough. Yet if Allen were to take the spell and the blood and the sage and never step foot in the shop again, Tyki would have no issue. Taking was free. Giving, however. Giving was where Tyki wanted him. Giving was where Tyki would have him.

“Or,” he offered with a small smile and a shrug, giving Allen the options. This was no lock-in contract, it wasn't a binding promise. It was a kiss, and just a kiss, and maybe not even that. Tyki did not have a greed for things like these. “You could just take it and go. Consider it a gift. Or a deposit, maybe,” he grinned, folded his elbows against the counter. Allen looked almost confused, watching Tyki with his head cocked in that contemplative expression of his.

After a long moment he asked, “Do you even know the cost of what you’re buying?” and a small, amused smile twitched onto his pursed lips.

Tyki laughed and admitted, “Not at all. You’re the one who determines the price, boy.”

Some short consideration later, Allen's amusement seemed to win out and he lifted himself to sit up on the counter. The Mirror swung his legs around so the he was sitting on the desk facing Tyki, who watched with an unconcerned grin. “I feel as though I should tell you," Allen said with that small smile on his pretty like, "you’re not paying in _things,_ but in _gestures,”_ he stressed, and reached out to curl his tattooed fingers around Tyki’s tie.

“How’s the exchange rate looking?” Tyki commented lightly and moved closer when Allen pulled him in. A hand on the counter at either side of Allen’s thighs, stepping close between his legs.

“You tell me,” Allen teased with a grin and lowered his head so he could press those smiling lips to Tyki’s. It was soft and slow and tasted like a dare - felt like Allen expected Tyki to try take what he wanted now he had Allen’s lips. But the thing with that was... Well the thing with that was, Tyki already had what he wanted; Allen’s mouth against his and a smile caught between them.

They stayed like that for a moment, not quite unmoving, before Allen’s laugh skated across Tyki’s cheek and he pulled back. “Is that what you wanted?” he asked, the edge of that tease still in his voice despite the cute redness of his cheeks.

Tyki didn’t break away from their position, only smirked up at Allen and returned, “Is that what _you_ wanted?”

Allen blinked at him like Tyki had said something incredibly interesting before he admitted, “Not quite.” His expression slipped into a grin and tilted his head, trailed his hands up to rest on Tyki’s shoulders. “Mind if I try again?”

“Not at all,” Tyki allowed and let his smile melt into the next kiss. It was still soft, still slow, but Allen’s lips moved gently against his with tentative insistence and Tyki couldn’t help but respond in kind. His lips felt like hesitation, and there was a reluctant desire in the way his hands tightened briefly on Tyki’s shoulders. A question, and an invitation.

Tyki’s hand found the small of Allen’s back and his gentle tongue found Allen’s soft lips, traced against his mouth with light teasing touches until they parted in a laughing grin. Tyki smiled with him, and pressed forward with the softest insistence. Allen melted into it when Tyki’s tongue touched his, shoulders unwinding and a short breath huffing past his nose, and Tyki trailed his hand slowly up Allen’s spine until it rested between his shoulderblades.

The Mirror’s sweet tongue returned his teasing touches, brushed against his lips when he realised perhaps he could kiss Tyki too rather than just be kissed by him. Tentative and playful, Allen’s tongue rolled against his, and his hands made their way up to cup Tyki’s neck, his jaw, to play with one of the piercings in Tyki’s ear.

Tyki tilted his head a little, nipped at Allen’s lower lip and imagined he could taste the sweet creamsicle blood flowing just below his soft, soft skin. With a quiet sound, explorative and indulgent, Allen let himself fall deeply into the kiss and curl his hand into Tyki’s hair, an arm resting lax over his shoulder. The way Allen’s fingers tightened rolled a small shudder down Tyki’s spine and pulled a quiet, pleased sigh from him. They pressed closer, Allen leaning down further while Tyki’s hips pushed against the edge of the counter, his hand trailing back down Allen’s spine with indulgent shamelessness to rest just above the waistline of his pants. Hand on the boy’s thigh and Allen’s fingers curled tight in his hair, lips and tongues meeting with slow, gentle insistence until the bell above the shop door chimed.

Allen tensed up, going still, and Tyki pulled back a bare inch to give him a relaxed, unconcerned smirk. his thumb smoothing over his thigh like a reassurance.

“Really?” a familiar voice called out from behind Allen, coloured amused exasperation. “During working hours?”

“Junior,” Tyki said as greeting to the nameless Bookman apprentice, grin stretching across his face while he smoothed his hand up Allen’s thigh, the boy's expression still caught between embarrassed and concerned. Tyki stepped away so their position was a little less compromising and countered the Bookman's teasing reprimand while Allen cast a glance of veiled anxiety over his shoulder, “surely you’ll forgive me the freedom of doing what I want in my own store."

“Uuuu-huh,” the Bookman drawled sarcastic agreement in a taunt, and Tyki leaned around Allen to arch an amused brow at him. Messy red hair sticking every which way, patch covering his right eye, red-trimmed black coat and the same massive scarf that Tyki remembered wanting to steal from him every time they'd met. At least he always had a smile. Tyki did not miss his predecessor. 

Allen, cheeks red and eyes shifty with embarrassment, glanced a frantic question at Tyki. He gave a small reassuring smile and tapped Allen's knee lightly in a quiet acknowledgement that their moment was over. Biting his lips to hold back the small smile, Allen glanced down with something like shyness - it absolutely wasn’t shyness, Tyki knew, but it _looked_ like it was and he figured that was the point - and lifted his legs to swing back over the counter and drop down on the other side.

“So, hey,” the Bookman announced conversationally, “it's been a while, how’s business, how’s the city? How are you? Who's your beau?” he asked, grinning cheekily at Allen.

 _“Please,”_ Tyki shot him an amused glance, “don’t interfere with my customer service.”

The Bookman brought a hand to his mouth to cover his grin while he muttered, _“Servicing,”_ and followed it up with a small coughing fit.

Tyki cleared his throat and turned his exasperated attention back to Allen, who’d picked up his plastic bag and seemed ready to extract himself from the awkward situation the Bookman had constructed like art of anarchy. Voice low, smooth, Tyki murmured to Allen, “If you have any issues with the spell, don’t push it. If something feels off come to me and I’ll tweak it.”

“Oh man, LV,” the Bookman spoke up with a taunting grin and came to lean against the counter, just as incapable of shutting the fuck up as ever, “you’re back in the spellmaking business?”

“No,” Tyki answered on a sigh, heedless of Allen’s arched brow and the intrigue flashing across his face, “I’m not. It’s a favour.”

“LV?” Allen picked up and Tyki pretended he didn't hear.

He rolled his eyes when the Bookman let out a comically relieved laugh and announced, “Oh, thank god. Cause, like. Remember last time you were messing around with mana and you ended up with some weird spliced elementals that went wild and had to be hunted down after destroying like three cities in a chaotic explosion of fire, lightning and unseasonal monsoons?”

Affronted, Tyki straightened and insisted, “That was-” six thousand years ago, fuck he couldn’t say that, _“not_ last time, that was when I was fucking around with mana just because I could.”

“And destroyed three cities?” Allen pressed, far too amused.

“Oh-hoho,” the Bookman laughed, “he’s done _far_ more than destroy some cities. Ever hear about how Exile-”

“How you never shut up?” Tyki spoke over him smoothly and inclined his head subtly towards Allen and his too-interested expression.

The Bookman knew Tyki’s reputation well enough to see the threat for what it was, and oddly had enough of a moral compass to decide that baiting Tyki wasn’t really worth a stranger’s sanity. Tyki was fond of Allen, yes, but lord knows he’d been around long enough to be fond of quite a number of people. He wasn’t anything near attached enough to be beyond ruining him just to make a point and the Bookman knew it. He didn't have to  _know_ he was a hostage, right? A hostage against shittalk. Huh. Well, Tyki had driven people insane for less. Bookman knew it, and Tyki knew it, and Allen didn't have to and that was the point. 

For Allen’s benefit and his own credit, Tyki continued once he’d ensured the Bookman’s silence, “And the elemental thing was intentional.”

The Bookman cackled and Allen snorted a laugh and asked, “Is that meant to make it better?”

“I would think so,” Tyki remarked with an offended expression. “Willful destruction is fine as long as it’s done right.”

Allen looked skeptical. “I don’t think that’s right,” he hazarded, caught between amusement and incredulity. _“Three cities._ When did this happen?”

Tyki tried to shrug noncommittally but the Bookman, being… Well, being a Bookman, he tilted his head and gave a long considering hum. After a moment’s thought he reasoned, “It was before he started running around in Exile City - he totally settled down after that. I mean, comparatively. So it would have been...” he trailed off for half a beat when he opened his eye and caught Tyki’s pleasant smile, his threatening eyes. “I suddenly don’t remember.”

“Remarkable,” Tyki didn’t even bother to feign shock. “And here I thought you Bookmen were all eidetic.”

“It must have been some time ago, though,” Allen reasoned with an amused grin, most of that exchange going over his head. “Three cities getting destroyed would have been like. A national crisis.” He tilted his head and seemed to consider that, glanced between the Bookman and Tyki. “So you’ve known each other for a while, huh?”

“I suppose,” Tyki started to say, but was silenced by the Bookman talking over him.

“Nah, I’ve only known Verja for a couple years.” He gave an easy shrug and grinned. “Gramps has been keeping an eye on him for decades - and before that was-”

“Circling back to how you never shut up,” Tyki interrupted, unimpressed and nearing the end of his patience, “is subtlety a lost art? The Bookman Clan really _is_ falling into decline.”

“Who’s Verja?” Allen asked, grinning at Tyki’s discomfort and extremely happy to pry into it.

“Nobody. Shut up,” he snapped when the Bookman opened his mouth to answer and immediately corrected himself for Allen's benefit without prompting, “it’s me. Old name. Doesn’t fit. Why are you here?” he demanded of the Bookman at the end of that short burst, glaring at his unaffected one-eyed grin.

Entirely too cheerful, the Bookman announced, “You’ve got some overdue books, buddy! Came to see if you fancy keeping your fingers.”

Irritable, he snapped, “Can’t you just rewrite them?”

“Sure can,” he admitted with a grin, "but Gramps doesn’t want extra copies floating around.”

“They’re not _floating,”_ Tyki rolled his eyes, “they’re fine. Tell him they’re fine. Go make your own.”

“Or, hear me out here,” the Bookman countered, “I take them back with me and _you_ rewrite them by hand from memory.”

“What’s the problem?” Allen asked, looking completely lost and glancing between the two of them as they spoke.

Tyki heaved an unimpressed sigh and muttered, “I stole some records from the Bookman Anuls a few centuries ago and they’ve been bothering me about it ever since.”

Bookman, his cheerful voice tinged with exasperation, reasoned, “So just give them back and we’ll stop bothering you about it. Duh.”

Allen, eyebrows creeping up to his hairline, repeated, “A _few_ centuries ago?”

Which… shit. Shit, fuck, Tyki was _so bad at this._ He lowered a glare at the Bookman, deeming the slip his fault. Which, well. If he hadn’t _been_ here it wouldn’t have _happened._ Stupid annoying fucking persistent assholes.

 _“Haaahh,”_ the Bookman doubled over to wheeze a laugh, “were you lying about your _age?_ Why? What else?”

“Plenty else,” Tyki picked up the pen from the desk and threw it at the laughing Bookman’s head, “and because I seem to be the only one who knows what the word _subtlety_ means.”

“No,” he giggled, “no no no, I get it. But I’m here to make your life harder _,_ remember?”

“So how old _are_ you?” Allen asked, eyes narrowed in painful suspicion.

“How old is- _ouch!”_ the Bookman started to answer with some rhetorical bulshit but was cut off by Tyki throwing the notebook at his head.

 _“Old,”_ he answered simply, seething. “Just,” he gestured sharply, “pick a number.”

“You seem stressed,” the Bookman grinned, undaunted, rubbing a hand at where the spine of the book had hit his forehead.

Allen looked as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing. Hesitantly, he asked, “Would you like me to let you deal with,” he gestured vaguely at whatever was going on, “this?”

“Please,” Tyki breathed, forcing the tension out of his shoulders.

It seemed... It felt awkward. That wasn't just Tyki, right? That wasn't just his embarrassment. It was awkward and he had the Bookman's big mouth to blame. So he hadn't really told _many_ secrets, but. He'd absolutely given rise to questions. Questions Allen would want answers to, surely. Knowing Allen, he'd like them immediately. Knowing the Bookman, that wasn't feasible. So, what, did he ask for Allen's number? Tyki almost scoffed a laugh at that. Yeah, no. The boy would come back next week at the latest, and if he wanted answers, well. Tyki was fairly certain he'd be seeing him sooner than that. But. It was still... uncomfortable. From his wavering hesitation, Tyki knew Allen could tell.

The Mirror cast a quick glance to the Bookman, the annoying redhead waiting with for one of them to make a move with an amused smile. Tyki could practically see his mental shrug when he decided to disregard the Bookman and pin his silver eyes on Tyki. A hand on the counter, he leaned across and reached his fingers to trace Tyki’s jaw and guide him closer. Lips brushing against Tyki’s cheek, he breathed with a grin, “Guess you weren’t lying about those secrets, _Verja.”_ Hearing that name on Allen’s tongue rolled a tremor down Tyki’s spine, trembling in his hands against the urge to drag his fingers through Allen’s hair and pull him into a kiss. “Mind if I try that Revelation on you?” Tyki could hear his grin in the whispered question, felt his own lips twitch with a smile.

Allen’s fingers trailed along his jaw back into his hair while Tyki murmured, voice curling in amusement, “Well sure, you can _try._ I’m not shedding my glamours for you.”

“Ideally,” Allen laughed quietly, his fingers twining in Tyki’s hair, “you won’t have to.” He tugged sharply, without warning, and Tyki jerked away with a quick yelp when he felt Allen actually rip a few hairs from his head. Already dancing away from the counter, five long dark hairs held in his fingers like a trophy, Allen smirked and swiped the plastic bag with his blood and sage from the counter with his free hand. Already making for the door, Allen grinned and mocked, “Thanks." Smug as anything, he turned his back and sauntered a few steps to the front of the shop. At the door he twisted to face them, pulling it open so the bell chimed overhead. With a cheeky grin he added, “You should give the blind rabbit his book back,” and only paused to blow a kiss and flutter his fingers before disappearing outside.

There was silence for a moment before the Bookman gave a long, low whistle and remarked, _“Wow._ You just got played, my friend.”

Tyki slowly dropped his hand from the back of his head, the sharp sting already fading, and slipped his fingers into his pocket. “Well,” he said at length, his distant expression defining itself into a competitive grin, “I got something of his too,” he reasoned and drew out the memory, held it up for the Bookman to see. It looked like a black gem, bound as it was in mana, but felt as light as air - and just as insubstantial, to anyone but Tyki.

“Is that,” the Bookman squinted when Tyki placed it in the air between them, letting it sit there unsuspended, “a memory?”

“Just a small one,” he smiled and spun it on its axis, watching the black facets catch the light. “A hundred thoughts flitted through his head in a handful of seconds,” he murmured almost mesmerised. “He’s quick,” he grinned and caught the spinning memory in his hand. “He’s interesting.”

“If you’re betting on him figuring you out,” the Bookman asked, “why bother lying to him in the first place?”

“Come on, Red,” Tyki smirked, pocketing the memory, “haven’t you ever been _bored_ before?”

“Working for Gramps?” he scoffed a laugh and nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been bored plenty. Never used it as a reason to play mind games and steal memories,” he added drily, “funnily enough.”

“If I didn’t think he could handle it I wouldn’t bother,” Tyki rolled his eyes, “obviously.”

“Okay,” he allowed doubtfully, “but what did you _do_ to him? Like, apart from steal his memories.”

Tyki frowned confusion and asked, “What do you mean?”

The Bookman tapped the black patch over his right eye and observed, “He was just. _Drowning_ in black. Tryna say that wasn’t you?”

Tyki huffed a laugh and glanced away, shook his head while he leaned his hip on the counter. “Wasn’t me,” he swore, “honest to god. Why do you think I’m so interested in him?”

“Never heard of a Mirror aligned black before,” he commented, and it was only then that Tyki recalled the kid had an oracle’s eye under that patch. Yeah, oracles were useless at telling fortunes, but they could still see natural truths - including, apparently, a Mirror’s true nature. “Usually they’re all white, wrapped up in yellow. Like… like a-”

“Black creamsicle,” Tyki finished for him, nodding with a grin twitching his lips.

The Bookman opened his mouth as though to argue, but pursed his lips after a moment and shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking along the lines of food, personally, but. I mean. Each to their own. I’m still mostly surprised that you let him walk out of here without, like. Taking a chunk out of him.”

Tyki cast him a scathing glance and observed, “You really have a low regard for me, don’t you?”

The Bookman spread his hands in exasperation and countered like it was a valid argument, _“Everyone_ has a low regard for you, LV. Have you stolen so many memories that you’ve forgotten half the shit you’ve done?”

Tyki lifted his finger and opened his mouth, knowing he had something for this and trying to put the thought together. “Collecting memories actually makes me stronger,” he said at length, “so. I don’t actually forget anything. Like, ever. It’s not in my nature.” After a brief silence he finished, “So no, I haven’t forgotten.”

The Bookman snickered and remarked, “I like how you didn’t actually bother trying to defend yourself there.”

“What’s to defend?” Tyki snorted a laugh and pushed away from the counter, making for one of the drawers way down along the endless counter. “It’s not possible for a _human_ to live without fucking up somehow. Look how long I’ve had to rack up sins.”

“Sins,” the Bookman laughed. “Your _existence_ is a sin.”

“You really feed into that propaganda?” Tyki smirked over his shoulder. “I exist here just as naturally as the gods did. And look where being omnipotent got them.”

“Dead,” the Bookman answered the rhetorical statement. “At your hands, I’ve been led to believe. I wouldn’t know though,” he added drily, “considering you stole our records on Lucc’d Verja.”

“For research,” Tyki defended lightly, tugging open a drawer and finding the tome exactly where he’d left it however long ago.

“On _yourself?”_ the Bookman elaborated incredulously.

“On your records,” Tyki corrected, “and their accuracy.” He dropped the thick, heavy book on the counter in front of the Bookman.

Looking down at the dusty cover, the Bookman asked, unimpressed, “Why did it take you three hundred years to do that?”

“It didn’t,” Tyki shrugged, “it was just funny to see how long I could inconvenience you for. Was it annoying?” he grinned.

 _“Very,”_ the Bookman muttered and flipped open to a page at random and flicked through, checking to make sure he hadn't changed anything or blacked out words or torn out pages or just generally vandalised it in any way. Which he hadn't. Not that he hadn’t tried, but the Bookman Clan was thorough with their protection enchantments and he hadn’t been bothered enough to find a way to break through them. With a heavy sigh the Bookman observed, “Guess I don’t have a reason to stick around like a thorn in your ass anymore.”

“Guess you’ll just have to piss off,” Tyki nodded in a mockery of regretfulness.

“Or,” the Bookman countered, “I could _inconvenience_ you for a bit longer.”

“Please don’t,” Tyki stated, dry.

“Beg all you want,” he shook his head like an apology, “there’s no god to hear you.”

Tyki sighed and rolled his head back to glare his exasperation at the ceiling while he suggested, “I could physically remove you from the premises.”

The Bookman didn’t even bother to hide his laughter at that, throwing his head back and shaking it. “No,” he said between chuckles, “no you couldn’t.” And, well. Tyki hated that he was right. The Bookman Clan had certain… perks. Their endless, unaltered records held even the ancient magic the rest of the world had forgotten, and that meant they got all the unbreakable glamours and barriers they wanted. It wasn’t like there was a god Tyki could kill to destroy them this time around, so the Bookmen were, in essence, untouchable. _“So,”_ the readhead stated, dropping his elbows on top of the book and cupping his chin in his hand with an obnoxiously intrigued smile, “LV’s got a paramour, huh? Should I make a note of that?”

Without missing a beat Tyki countered, “Should I rip this entire block of time from your precious memory and leave you to pick up the pieces?”

The Bookman smiled sweetly and sighed, “Oh, Verja. You know you can’t fuck with a Bookman’s memory.”

Tyki arched a brow and dared, “Try me.”

He ducked his head with a laugh that shook his entire body and said, “I hear Gramps already did.” He glanced up with a teasing grin and entreated, “To refresh my _precious memory,_ how did that go for you?”

Tyki glanced away on a sigh with his reluctant admission of, “Not great, honestly.” Yeah, he remembered what it felt like to have his essence torn from his vessel and pinned immobile to a wall like a living tapestry in the Bookman Clan's Library for, what, three years? Until they got bored of the decor. Not fun. See, he didn't cross the Bookman Clan for a  _reason._ Tried that. Didn't work. 

 _“Sooooo,”_ the Bookman drawled out, his chin propped in both his hands like he was trying to look cute, “what’s his name?” he asked like a middle schooler prying for information on a crush.

“Why,” Tyki asked skeptically, “would I tell you?”

Smoothly, the Bookman answered with that easy smile, “So I can make an accurate record of the first person you hollow out and drive to insanity after five hundred years of uncharacteristically good behaviour.”

“Five hundred years, huh?” Tyki remarked, not even blinking at the rest of it. “Has it really been that long?”

The Bookman grinned and offered, “Happy anniversary, you bloodthirsty beast.”

“I mean,” Tyki scoffed, “obviously not. Not if I can go five hundred years.”

“After…” the Bookman pretended to think, _“how_ many years of scourge and carnage?”

“You’re going to need a bigger measurement of time than years,” was all Tyki responded with.

“Okay,” the Bookman waved it off, “okay. But seriously, honestly, what’s his name?” When Tyki arched an unimpressed brow he fluttered his lashes and pressed a hand to his heart, saying, “As a friend and confidant.”

“As insurance for you to take my book and leave?” Tyki bargained.

The hand on the Bookman’s heart clutched at his shirt and his expression turned comedically pained. “You want me… _gone?”_ Tyki kept his unimpressed face unmoved until he dropped the simpering act with a defeated sigh and groaned, _“Alright,_ I’ll go. Only if you tell me though.” He grinned and pointed at his covered eye before reiterating, “The _truth.”_

Friend he was not, confidant he was not, and surely he’d leave by his own means if only Tyki ignored his baiting, but Tyki found himself grinning and answering, “Walker,” regardless. “Allen Walker.” As ridiculous as it was, it felt good to say his name. The words tasted sweet on his tongue. As sweet as Allen’s lips on his, and the intoxicating magic bubbling just below his skin.

"I'm sure," the Bookman remarked, voice filled with amusement while he flipped to the index of book, "there's a chapter here..."

Tyki arched a brow and remarked, "Surely not of people I've given half a shit about. Not a whole chapter."

 _"Hah,"_  he laughed at that and flipped the heavy book open to a certain page, "nah. People you've royally screwed over."

Skeptically, he asked, "Isn't that... the whole book?"

The Bookman opened his mouth, about to come out with a witty comment. After a moment he tilted his head and considered, "Actually. Yes, yeah, just about. God, does that  _bother_ you?" he squinted up at Tyki. He hummed a question and the Bookman elaborated, "You know, being a massive dick since like. The beginning of time."

Tyki pulled in a deep breath while he contemplated before admitting, "Can't say it does." The Bookman snorted a laugh and snatched a pen from the mess on the counter, printing Allen's name in a margin with tiny, neat handwriting. "What about you?" he countered and the Bookman glanced up with a questioning hum. "Do you get a book written about how you're a massive pain in my ass?"

The Bookman threw back a laugh and snapped the heavy tome shut, picked it up and put it under his arm. "Man," he chuckled and pocketed Tyki's pen, making for the door, "I wish."


End file.
